The African Free School was founded in 1787 (although it would not have an official building until 1796) in New York by John Jay (the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court), Alexander Hamilton (the first Secretary of the Treasury ) and other members of the New York Manumission Society. The main purpose of the school was to create a Negro intelligentsia which would later participate actively in the leadership of the Abolitionist movement.
This school was developed for children living in New York. Other areas also developed African American Free Schools. Philadelphia had seven schools; Boston had three. Salem, Massachusetts; Portland, Maine; New Haven, Connecticut; and Newport, Rhode Island, each had one school. While these were modest efforts, they remain signifiacnt since any kind of formal education for African Americans was almost nonexistent before the Civil War."
[Back]
Copyrighted
2001, United States
of America
Anita Gonzalez & Ian Granick